This course is meant to create a pathway into learning about modern electronics, for people who are scared of the math and general trickery that usually comes with it. A hands-on approach is taken in this course through a combination of lecture and experimentation to teach you about the different basic components used in modern electronics. Additionally, visuals are used throughout lectures to explain the theory behind how these basic components work and their role in the everyday electronics that we use, while keeping the math to a minimum.

This lesson focuses on explaining the goals of this course and giving you a general feeling for how the lectures will be given (so it's only 6 minutes long). The lesson page contains additional downloadable information like homework, schematics and formulas.

The fundamental element of all things electrical is electricity, hopefully that fact is not very surprising to you. This lesson explains what electricity is in plain english, how we describe it mathematically and also how you can see the effect electricity has on the devices you use everyday.

The resistor is the first fundamental component that anyone studies when they start learning about electronics. Ideas like what is an insulator or a conductor are introduced and related to electrical resistance. This lesson covers all of those topics and even adds some mathematical theory called Ohm’s law.

After getting a nice introduction to the resistor, it’s customary to learn about the second most common component in electroincs, called the capacitor. This lesson performs some cool experiments that attempt to convince you that a capacitor could also be called a small battery, while also introducing the basic idea of storing electrical charge.

The third and final component of what is known as the basic types of passive electrical components is called the inductor. In this lesson we take a look at the inductor’s alternative method of storing electrical charge that, while similar to the capacitor, is done in a magnetic way.

Everyone seems to already be familiar with LEDs, however you need to understand what basic diodes are and how they operate before you can make the leap to understanding LEDs. This lesson uses both standard diodes and LEDs to perform some experiments, explain what diodes are and to understand why we use them.

Like diodes, most people have heard about transistors, however few people understand what they are and what they can do. This lesson takes a few steps deeper to explain and perform some experiments about how transistors are great electrical on/off switches. A little theory is also explored to introduce you to BJT transistor formulas.

Moving beyond single device components we have the operational amplifier. This device is actually a combination of special transistors and other components all put inside an IC package. This lesson will perform a few experiments, look at some mathematical theory to introduce you to the many functions of the op-amp.

If the op-amp was a great invention for analog electronics, the 555 timer was the invention of the decade for digital electronics. This lesson will show you why we needed a single device like the 555 timer and how we can use a 555 timer to create a predicatable oscillator using some theory and mathematical equations.

Beyond the electronics and fun experiments that we have performed in the previous lessons, we need to study how electrical schematics are drawn so that we can document our designs. This lesson gives an overview of how to draw schematics and takes a few looks at what datasheets are, how to use them and why we need them.

Prerequisites

Generally, electronics is a difficult subject mathematically, however theoretically it's actually not as bad if you take a hands-on approach and create vivid imagery to demonstrate what is going on. Using this approach, virtually anyone with a basic math background and a desire to know more about electronics can get started. So the following prerequisites are necessary for this course:

High School Education

Basic Algebra

An Open Mind

Desire To Learn

Syllabus

Overview

This Introduction To Modern Electronics course will be split up into 10 lessons with the lecture video for each lesson hosted on youtube. The lectures will be to 8-12 minutes in length so that you have enough time to see the information and can go over it twice to perform any of the experiments while following along with the video. Each lecture will contain 4 main sections, an introduction, a plain english explanation, theory and real world example. In addition, each lesson video will be hosted at PyroEDU with downloadable offline information and material like homework, schematics, formulas and parts information.

Expectations

This course is meant to take you, the learner, from a blank slate to a more informed individual by teaching about electronics in a hands-on way, as the lecture videos will emphasize and guide you with experimentation. You should expect to learn the basic formulas of electronics and how to identify the different types of components inside of modern electronics: like in cell phones, remote control cars or computer cards. Beyond that, you should also expect to get a better 'feeling' for what individual electronic components do and even be able to give an educated guess as to their purpose in circuits.

From there you can access all of the lectures (as we do them) and download homework, schematics, formulas and extra parts information.

Teacher qualifications

Hello! Aside from building many electronics tutorials and projects, and posting their full hardware schematics and source code on PyroElectro.com, I studied computer and electrical engineering at university and have Bachelor's + Master's degrees in the subject. My work is typically more slanted to digital hardware, however the basics are the same no matter if you're an analog designer or a digital designer.